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NRL News
“Thank
You, President Bush” In the other editorial that begins on page two, I talk about the future of our Movement. For all the reasons outlined there, I believe the picture is bright, not in spite of the bumpy road ahead, but because of it. Everyone’s understandable first reaction is to gear up for the future battles. But before we strap on breastplates and helmets, let’s pause to consider all that a good and decent man has done for the littlest Americans. I would like to say a heartfelt “Thank you” to a man who I’ve only met once in person but who I have admired from afar day in and day out: pro-life President George W. Bush. I know enough about the American presidency to appreciate that the greatness of more than a few Presidents was not recognized until decades, or longer, after their terms in office ended. But from our single-issue pro-life perspective, we don’t need years of perspective to determine how important President Bush was, and is, to the cause for which you and I have dedicated our lives. He’s been absolutely instrumental. Like a diamond held up to the light, we could examine the many facets of his unrelenting, fearless campaign to hasten the day when every child is “welcomed in life and protected in law.” Most of you already know the list so I will not dwell on his initiatives one by one. Let’s look instead at a couple of items in the context of the big picture. Read their literature, listen to them speak, and you quickly realize that the Abortion Establishment is comprised of true believers, most especially the leadership of Planned Parenthood. Midwived by the eugenics movement of the early 20th century, PPFA is driven by an elitist ideology whose ultimate origins are ugly and dark. PPFA is, of course, the largest abortion “provider” in the United States. Anything that increases the number of dead babies is, literally, good for business. The utterly predictable outcome of the combination of the so-called “Freedom of Choice Act” (which Barack Obama has co-sponsored and promises to sign as President) and Obama’s view of abortion as a central part of health care coverage is to greatly expand the incidence of abortion in America. Neither of these was a possibility on President Bush’s watch. But there’s more to the anti-life agenda than killing additional unborn babies. There is ensuring that the American people live with the knowledge that unborn babies are killed in ways so barbaric it makes you question whether we can call ourselves a civilized nation. That was why the titanic battle over the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act was so telling. After misleading the American people for years with lies that such abortions didn’t really occur, the child didn’t feel any pain, if they did happen they were rarer than hen’s teeth, etc., etc., their last line of defense came down to this revealing rationale. Don’t forget, the pro-abortionists told us, that even if they are no longer allowed to puncture the skulls of nearly fully delivered babies and vacuum out their brains, there are lots of other gruesome ways abortionists can snuff out the lives of unborn babies. What a bunch. As NRLC took up the cudgel to pass the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, we knew that President Bush was with us from beginning to end. His administration defended the law up through the courts and to its successful conclusion in the Supreme Court in 2007. When the court upheld the act in Gonzales v. Carhart, it was the first time an abortion technique had been banned since the High Court visited Roe v. Wade on an unsuspecting nation in 1973. Significantly, for once the American people were privy to what makes the pro-abortion mind tick. The flip side, if you will, of killing babies in the most heinous way imaginable is to tell the public that the bodies of these babies can be strip-mined—cannibalized—for parts which would be used to cure diseases. In other words, out of this unspeakable evil would come “good.” In the 1980s we were assured that the brains of aborted babies were like an elixir. When transplanted into recipients, fetal brain tissue would cure everything from AIDS to the common cold. It did nothing of the sort; in fact the whole enterprise was so rife with side effects proponents finally gave it up. We heard the same harebrained claims for stem cells lethally harvested from “spare embryos.” When President Bush came into office, the roar from Congress, the media, and the medical research establishment was deafening. Unless you are a heartless cad (and a Neanderthal to boot), you will give us access to the federal spigot, and in no time flat, the paralyzed leap from their wheelchairs. Undaunted, President Bush delivered a nationally televised speech in which he refused to pit medical advances against sound ethics. He vowed to veto measures to provide federal funding of research that would require killing human embryos at the same time he promised support for ethically accepted alternative ways. The derisive hoots were heard in all the usual places. But in the seven years since his speech, embryonic stem cell research has made no significant progress in assisting humans, while a bevy of ethically acceptable alternatives are either already helping patients or hold out tremendous reason for optimism. Researchers who cut their teeth on embryonic stem cell research are either moving out of the field altogether or putting much greater emphasis on non-controversial sources. None of that would have happened had President Bush folded under pressure. (And Mr. Bush should also be given great credit for helping codify in federal law the principle that a crime that injures a mother and her unborn child has two victims, and that if both die it is a double homicide. The Unborn Victims of Violence Act was genuinely a landmark piece of legislation.) Thank you, President Bush, for all you have done. Although it has gotten lost in the pro-abortion jubilee about Obama, you helped move our culture in the direction of life. As we anticipate the administration of President-elect Barack Obama, we vow not to let you down nor the unborn babies whose cause you took as your own. |